As the pilot part of the AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project draws to a close in three weeks, local members of the project’s leadership and sustainability teams are pinpointing how to keep the project going locally and to showcase the project to visitors.

Specifically, they want to create a visible vitality center in the city’s downtown, where information about the project can be displayed and merchandise for it can be sold.

Albert Lea City Manager Victoria Simonsen said the group would like to see a place in the downtown on Broadway Avenue that can be used as the central location for people in town and visitors alike to come. There, people can buy Blue Zones merchandise — hats, polo shirts, socks — and people can do things such as take the Vitality Compass.

“The issue is how do we finance that,” Simonsen asked.

The city manager said she plans to submit letters to the project’s current funders to ask if they would be willing to continue a relationship with Albert Lea.

“This is a branding opportunity. They’re going to hand it to us on a platter,” she said.

She noted it might be a hard decision for the public to understand; however, as positions have had to be cut because of a tight budget.

“I know if we don’t invest in this now, we’ll be talking about this five, 10 years later,” Councilor Vern Rasmussen said.

Other councilors agreed.

“We need to start embracing the fact that we have the baby boomers here,” Simonsen added. “They are the group with the disposable income. Maybe we need to embrace that fact.”

She said there is a definite trend that people in metro areas over 50 are moving to smaller communities.

“If we can market ourselves as the place to go for the quality of life in your years, we might have a real opportunity here,” she said.

One place the leadership and sustainability teams talked about having the vitality center was in the main level of the Jacobson Apartments building.

“I really think we could do it as a community thing,” Simonsen said. “If we could get so and so to donate the paint, the Sheetrock. If we could do that, it becomes the community’s Blue Zone center, it’s not the city’s.”

A Vitality Center in the Jacobson building would fit in well with a potential Artspace Projects Inc. development, too, she said.

“When this Blue Zones thing really starts to kick off, think of the people that will be downtown, the exposure that will get,” Councilor Larry Baker said.

Simonsen said she has received numerous calls from other cities who want to implement the project into their communities.

Blue Zones founder Dan Buettner has decided the project will be extended to other communities on an invitation-only basis.

She said Blue Zones already has plans to next take the project to a mid-size and larger metropolitan city.

During Albert Lea’s wrap-up event Oct. 13, project leaders will share with the public how they hope to sustain the project in 2010, and the coordinators of each initiative of the project will have come up with a budget of what they need to carry out their plan for that year.

That way if businesses or other groups ask how they can help, they can be presented with a list of possible ways to do so.

Simonsen did not want to give away any of the other things taking place the night of the wrap-up event but did allude to a large media announcement.